Rodgers Insists Liverpool Are Not Imitating Tottenham

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Brendan Rodgers has explained that the busy business conducted by Liverpool to date has been the production of long-term planning and the club is not going to repeat what Tottenham did last season.

Brendan Rodgers has insisted that the Reds are not following the infamous transfer plan of Tottenham last season, and have a strategy in mind for recruiting new players.

“It’s a different club and different vision we have here. At Liverpool there’s a strategy behind what we are doing. We talked a lot with our recruitment team last season, knowing that through the summer we needed to improve the depth of our squad.

“Clearly we were not strong enough last season in terms of numbers and quality. We always planned to bring in a number of players, hoping we were going to be in the Champions League, so it would give us the opportunity to challenge on all fronts.

“We see them as young players that can really develop in the future as well. The integration into the squad is very smooth because we’ve got a wonderful group of players and they always make it very easy for players coming in.”

Liverpool have so far made six additions to the squad with Rickie Lambert, Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren coming from Southampton; Emre Can coming in from Bayern Leverkusen and Lazar Markovic from Benfica. Divock Origi was most recently signed from Lille, but he has immediately been loaned back to the French club.

People have debated and compared Liverpool’s strategy to Tottenham’s as the club has added numerous names to the ranks instead of one star player. But it has to be understood that Liverpool usually don’t do that sort of business. Very rarely has the club gone and brought in an established star or a ‘marquee’ player if you will. Fernando Torres and Luis Suarez were both additions which were made as the players showed great potential and were very exciting but were not yet characterized as ‘stars’. When Liverpool did think they made a ‘star’signing was when they purchased Andy Carroll for a whopping 35m GBP. The English striker went on to flop and never lived up to the potential Kenny Dalglish and co saw in him.

Liverpool also have a clear style of play and chemistry in their game unlike Tottenham. The side uses a swift counter-attacking game and all the players currently in the crop are capable of continuing the game. Besides, the core of the team is not going to change. Daniel Sturridge, Philippe Coutinho, Raheem Sterling, Steven Gerrard among a few others, are still going to be the names featuring regularly in the starting 11.

Brendan Rodgers is aware of this and is thus making wiser additions and adding players who will add to the squad and help the Reds compete on all four fronts. He is upgrading the fringe players and adding depth and quality to the squad. It also has to be noted that all the signings made so far, barring the exception of Divock Origi since his name was not doing rounds early on in the window, were going to be made irrespective of Suarez’s departure. Rodgers still has a chunk of money left from the Uruguayan’s sale and can invest it in the window. The strike department is one which needs to be addressed along with the much needed addition of a full-back.